SDN market gathering momentum

04 Jul 2012

Recent announcements by Cisco and Extreme Networks suggest a network equipment market determined to respond to threat to business.

SDN aims to open up traffic control on a network to user-customisable software, independent of individual hardware elements such as routers and switches, typically using open protocols such as OpenFlow. In essence, it’s about enabling network admins to understand and manage a network as a unified abstraction, rather than grapple individually with its constituent parts.

The prospect of ‘programmable networks’ is an appealing one for those charged with managing corporate networks but also an undeniable threat to network equipment manufacturers, whose businesses are built on selling switches and routers pre-installed with proprietary firmware. Using SDN, network admins can move more of their networks away from that equipment onto cheap, commodity servers instead. In response, vendors are scrambling to embrace a technological approach that may otherwise crush them.

At its mid-June Cisco Live event in San Diego, the networking giant introduced its Open Network Environment (One). This includes the One Platform software development kit (or OnePK) that gives developers API access to Cisco’s routing and switching operating systems. Cisco will roll out OnePK support for its platforms in phases, with initial support on its ASR 1000 and ISR G2 routers. It also unveiled proof-of-concept controller software and agents for its Catalyst 3750 and 3560 routers and expanded support for OpenStack, multiple hypervisors and virtual LAN across its products.

“The Cisco Open Network Environment is key to our vision of an intelligent network that is more open, programmable and application-aware – a vision in which the network is transformed into a more-effective business enabler,” said Padmasree Warrior, Cisco’s chief technical officer, in a company statement.

A little over two weeks later, it was Extreme Networks’ turn to declare its SDN intentions. On 2 July, the company announced several initiatives that “broaden” its portfolio of SDN offerings for data centres, clouds, mobile carrier networks and research campuses. It intends to provide OpenFlow support across its Ethernet switch portfolio and will support multiple OpenFlow controllers, including those from NEC and BigSwitch.

“An SDN approach that provides network abstraction, centralised intelligence and programmability is fundamental to addressing the fast-evolving challenges associated with mobility, cloud sourcing and the consumerisation of IT,” said Shehzad Merchant, vice president of technology strategy at the company.

The company’s use of the term ‘broaden’ is an interesting one, because Extreme Networks’ portfolio of switches have already offered a variety of programmability options for some time, but the company had previously done little to publicise those capabilities. Now that momentum is building around SDN, that programmability is suddenly a more marketable asset – and as several market analysts have suggested, Cisco’s One announcement may have prompted Extreme Networks to shout louder about it.

Both Extreme Networks and Cisco will need to keep shouting, though. While the market is gathering pace, it’s still far from clear who the beneficiaries will be among technology providers. Search engine giant Google, for example, has already deployed an SDN infrastructure that connects all its data centres using inexpensive commodity hardware and operators such as NTT and Verizon are moving forward with plans to do the same, according to a recent report on the global SDN market from research company MarketsandMarkets.

The firm estimates that this market will be worth $2.1 billion in 2017, from just $198 million this year. “SDN promises a big array of optimisation techniques and newer algorithms for managing traffic,” says the report. “Over the next five years, SDN will penetrate further into telco and data centre networks and will find its place in enterprises.”